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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27705974">CoPilots</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerumbird/pseuds/littlerumbird'>littlerumbird</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Interstellar Oceans [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek: The Next Generation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Family Feels, Imzadi (Star Trek), Labor and Delivery, not graphic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 14:29:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,793</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27705974</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerumbird/pseuds/littlerumbird</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Will Riker is excited to be a dad. And yet nothing that anyone told them has prepared him for his son's arrival. Set about four years before the Deep Waters fic. I'm linking it into a series I'm calling Interstellar Ocean.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>William Riker/Deanna Troi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Interstellar Oceans [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026340</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>CoPilots</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The last month or so has been intense. Will knows he’s driving his wife up the bulkheads and back down again, asking far too many times how she’s feeling. She (and the medical staff) have been understanding. It’s not like he’s been a father before. The last two weeks in particular, three if he’s honest, have felt like having a time bomb on board. Knowing his wife was due to go into labor at any given moment.</p><p>She’s handled this whole pregnancy so well. Deanna has always been resilient, and this was no exception. The first months and these last weeks, she has been tired more easily. And he knows she’s uncomfortable these days. Moreso as she entered into week forty-one of pregnancy and struggled to get more than four or five hours of sleep at a stretch at best. And he’s at least half responsible for it.</p><p>Nothing that anyone told either of them had prepared them for labor. Ian’s birth felt even more anomalous when she rolled into hour ten and then fourteen and past twenty hours of labor. As much as Ian was in a hurry to get here, their son was taking his own sweet time. Dr. Ree had urged them, several times, to let him intervene and go ahead and deliver through other options.</p><p>And of course, his wife is determined to do this the way women on Betazed have done it for generations. That she can do this. And even if she’s exhausted and crying every five or six hours, she’s not giving on this. </p><p>He knows that she has to be aware that he pulled aside Ree at hour eleven and asked at what point this was going to be harmful for her or the baby. Because as much as he wants to let her do what she wants because this is, honestly, all her and he’s not even the side show here… Well, there’s a point where he will step in because he’s always been the person to make sure she doesn’t push herself too far in spite of herself. Even if this child of theirs is plenty big enough but wanting to take his own sweet time in arriving.</p><p>Beverly was still on her way. As much as they fully trusted Ree to handle this, and they had full confidence, Beverly had insisted she was coming, too. They’d simply been through too much and were their own sort of family. She’d planned to arrive earlier in the week, but she’d been delayed. And their son was taking his time anyway. And now her shuttle was having to re-route thanks to a collapsing star. And Will was feeling every hour of his own sleep deprivation.</p><p>Deanna had sent him to sleep a few times. And he caved into it, feeling a little like a traitor that he could nap when she only managed short rests between contractions. By hour twenty, he was exhausted enough to fall asleep in ten minute bursts here or there, but afraid to nap even a room away because surely it wouldn’t be long now. She’d argued that they didn’t both need to be wiped out, but even at that, she still woke him several times from naps because of their bond and the intensity of becoming parents.</p><p>They tried every trick in the book, and most from almost every other world that anyone wanted to share with them. She had been curious about water births, but the delivery area simply wasn’t set up for it. And Will didn’t like that the bathtub in their own quarters was further away from sickbay if more care was needed. She’d tried every position she could manage.  Kneeling helped for a while. And for some time, it helped her to be on her hands and knees. But even that was hard to hold comfortably as the hours dragged out.</p><p>Until she was fully effaced, they took walks when she could handle it. Walk was a distortion, though. It had been a shuffle, stopping every few hundred feet for a while and later every forty feet or so when Deanna braced her hand against a bulkhead and breathed deeply to ride out a contraction. At one point he was sure that he was going to have to scoop her up and carry her back in when the strongest contraction yet hit so hard that her legs were trembling with the intensity and fatigue. Her dark eyes were wide, and she’d struggled to even send him a clear thought for long moments. In the end, he’d helped her to a bench and was debating calling for assistance when she pushed herself up and started to shuffle back to delivery.</p><p>At least ten calls from Beverly and thirty two hours later… and his son was screaming, and his wife was crying and grinning and sinking fully into the birthing chair. Somewhere in the last minutes, a chair for him had appeared and one of the staff had firmly pressed his shoulder to urge him to sit. Scooting closer, his fingers cupped the top of his son’s head as they handed him to Deanna. He marveled over the bald little head and red face. Their boy looked like a miracle.</p><p>Her fingers brush his cheek, and it’s only then that he realizes that he’s crying, too.  “Damn, he’s amazing. And you’re incredible,” Will breathed, leaning in a little closer to take in the wrinkled brow that’s slowly smoothing itself, the tiny slope of a nose, and pursed lips. The doctor and nurses are commenting on his solid size, but he still looks so small to Will. A whole person in tiny miniature. And half of him and half of Deanna, and his brain can’t wrap around it right now.</p><p>They keep Deanna and Thaddeus in delivery for another day. Moreso to let her sleep a little before sending them back to their quarters after a day and a quarter of delivery with a newborn. And a nurse is on call if they need any help or simply to sleep for a few hours until Beverly can get here. Beverly is practically turning herself (and no doubt the pilot of the shuttle) inside out trying to get there faster. </p><p>But now Alyssa Ogawa is handing him Thad, and Will feels everything in himself go stock still.</p><p>“Will?” Deanna knows something is off before he can even say the words.</p><p>“Captain?” Alyssa asks, her hand wrapping around his arm and guiding him, as he cradles the bundle of blanket and Thad against his chest, to the bio bed where Deanna is already sitting with her legs over the edge.</p><p>Deanna’s arm drapes around his shoulders. “Give us a few minutes?”</p><p>She’s not exactly happy about it, but Alyssa nods and slips out, closing the door behind her for privacy.</p><p>“Will?” comes the soft repeat of his name.</p><p>“She handed him to me, and what? We … take him to our quarters? They hand out the baby and we walk out of here? Hell, I’m not even sure I’m supporting his neck correctly half the time, and what if I sneeze and drop him? He’s so damn tiny, and I know you don’t think so after what you went through, but where the hell is Beverly?”</p><p>Deanna’s flattens against his back and rubbing in firm circles. “Deep breaths, ok?”</p><p>He gulps in a breath, his hold comfortable around the snoozing infant in his arms, but everything else locked as though too much movement will make this moment shatter. By the fifth breath, his shoulder ease a little. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you, not the other way around,” he finally said on an exhale, face flushing.</p><p>She used her arm to guide him closer and pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “Would it make you feel better if I took him for a moment?”</p><p>Will shrugged. “His whole life changed, and he’s just sleeping through it like it’s no big deal. He… he trusts us to do all of this, and I don’t know what I’m doing.”</p><p>“You’ve had training,” Deanna reminded him with a fond smile. “It’s… well, a little like when you left Starfleet Academy. You’d learned a lot of things, but hadn’t gotten any practical experience, yet. Like the first time you piloted a shuttle craft.”</p><p>He shook his head slightly. “That was different. I had a trainer for a co-pilot, and I was too young and cocky to know to be scared.”</p><p>“Well, Beverly is our trainer for a while. And we have the staff on hand if we need anything. And then we can be each other’s copilots.” Her fingers reached up and wrapped around his shoulder, digging into the knot there. “Half of this is scary because it’s new. And we don’t know what we’re doing, yet. He doesn’t trust us necessarily, he’s just too little to know we’re making it up as we go for a while.”</p><p>He sighed a little, relaxing a bit further but still keeping their son cradled against his chest. “And the other half?”</p><p>“Of what?” she asked with a small yawn.</p><p>“The other half of why it’s scary,” he prompted, wondering for the fifth time today if maybe they should stay in sickbay another day so she could catch up on more sleep. Even with the medical staff giving some bottle feedings, there were several interruptions to her sleep between nursing and a few routine checks.</p><p>She smiled a little and cupped his chin, drawing him in for a soft kiss. “Because we’re both very sleep deprived. I think Thad has the right idea with a nap.” Her eyes met his and softened. “And I’d really love to take a nap in our bed instead of a bio bed.”</p><p>Will took another slow breath and shifted Thad in his convenient swaddle against his heart, arms adjusting until he had him in a secure one-armed hold and hand cautiously around his son’s head. He glanced down to be sure of the distance and slowly slid off the bed. His hand extended to her.</p><p>Deanna lifted his fingers to her lips and tilted her head slightly with a grin. “We have a son.”</p><p>“Yeah,” he breathed, mirroring back the same smile. There would be more hovering later. Making sure she was as okay as Dr. Ree and Alyssa insisted she was. For now, Thad was sucking his thumb and perfectly content to be carried to any galaxy. Wrapping his free arm around his wife, he let Deanna set the pace through sickbay and toward the turbo lift and their quarters. “Copilots, huh?”</p><p>As the turbolift slid shut around their newly expanded family, Deanna gave his fingers a light squeeze. “Copilots.”</p>
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